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Gigerenzer the Decided TI 2005-113/2 Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper Gigerenzer the Decided Floris Heukelom HME Department, University of Amsterdam, and Tinbergen Institute. Tinbergen Institute The Tinbergen Institute is the institute for economic research of the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Universiteit van Amsterdam, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam Roetersstraat 31 1018 WB Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel.: +31(0)20 551 3500 Fax: +31(0)20 551 3555 Tinbergen Institute Rotterdam Burg. Oudlaan 50 3062 PA Rotterdam The Netherlands Tel.: +31(0)10 408 8900 Fax: +31(0)10 408 9031 Please send questions and/or remarks of non- scientific nature to [email protected]. Most TI discussion papers can be downloaded at http://www.tinbergen.nl. Gigerenzer the Decided a tale of difficult distinctions The journey ventures into a land of rationality that is different from the fam iliar one we know from m any stories in cognitive science and econom ics –tales in which hum ans live in a world with unlim ited tim e and knowledge, where the sun of enlightenm ent shines down in beam s of logic and probability. The new land of rationality we set out to explore is, in contrast, shrouded in a m ist of dim uncertainty. People in this world have only lim ited tim e, knowledge, and com putational capacities with which to m ake inferences about what happens in the enigm atic places in their world. - Gigerenzer , Todd and the ABC research group (1999) I argue that the conceptual distinction between single-event probabilities and frequencies is of direct relevance for psychology, and vice versa. In short, the proper functioning of a m ental algorithm depends on the way in which inform ation is represented. So, to analyze probabilistic reasoning, we m ust attend to the difference between, at least, the frequency and the single-event representation of probability. If evolution has favored one of these form s of representations, then it would be frequencies, which prelinguistic organism s could observe and act on. Attending to this distinction suffices to m ake several apparently stable cognitive illusions disappear. - Gigerenzer (1994) Gigerenzer the Decided – Floris Heukelom , August 2005 Introduction Hum ans are intriguing beings. They are also very com plex beings. The result of m illions of years of evolution, they have developed sophisticated m eans to deal with their environm ent. So where should we begin to investigate the working of these com plex beings? Fortunately, the com plexity partly lies therein that hum an beings have developed am azingly sim ple rules of thum b as a basis for their behavior. As a start one could study these fast and frugal heuristics. This, in a nutshell, is the view of the psychologist Gigerenzer. It is, of course, not an idea that cam e from nowhere, but is the result of years of research. Specifically, it is to a large degree shaped by his disagreem ent with another and closely related psychological theory of the working of the hum an m ind: the Heuristics and Biases theory of Kahnem an and Tversky. This disagreem ent itself was to a considerable extent shaped by Gigerenzer’s earlier work on the history of probability theory and statistics, which sprang from his interests in psychophysical m odels of m easurem ent with which he started his career. As not everything can be treated in the detail it deserves, the focus in this paper will be on Gigerenzer’s criticism of Tversky and Kahnem an and his com peting research program as advanced since the late 1990s. After an introductory overview of the work of Gigerenzer in the first section, som e general them es of the background of Gigerenzer’s research are introduced in the second section. The third section provides an overview of Gigerenzer’s involvem ent in the collaborative research on the history of probability theory and statistics as it form s the basis of his criticism of Kahnem an and Tversky, treated in the fourth, and of his own research program , treated in the fifth section. After concluding rem arks have ended the paper, Tversky and Kahnem an’s answer to Gigerenzer’s allegations are sum m arized in an appendix. 1 Gigerenzer the Decided – Floris Heukelom , August 2005 1. Introductory overview of the work of Gigerenzer1 Born in 1947, Gigerenzer receives a degree in psychology from the University of Munich in 1974. Although 27 m ay seem relatively old to obtain a university degree, it is the average by Germ an standards. Three years later in 1977 Gigerenzer receives his PhD and five years after this, in 1982, his Habilitation, both from the University of Munich. In different positions Gigerenzer is affiliated with the University of Munich from 1974 up to 1984. After this he holds from 1984 until 1995, in chronological order, professorships at the universities of Konstanz (Germ any), Salzburg (Austria), and Chicago (USA). From 1995 to 1997 Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich. Since 1997 he has been the director of the Max Planck institute for Hum an Developm ent in Berlin. The publications of Gigerenzer are characterized by a gradual shift from exclusively Germ an in the first four years to alm ost exclusively English in the first years of the twenty-first century. As a broad approxim ation Gigerenzer’s publications are furtherm ore characterized by an em phasis on m athem atical m easurem ent m odels in social psychology and psychophysics in the first five years, to an em phasis on (the history of) probability and statistics during the 1980s, to an em phasis on (bounded) rationality during the last fifteen years. Gigerenzer is m arried to Lorraine Daston, historian and director of the Max Planck Institute in the history of science2, with whom he professionally collaborated at the tim e of his work on the history of statistics during the 1980s. 2. Other introductory them es Gigerenzer is, at least in the early years of his career, both a psychophysician and a cognitive psychologist, a com bination he shares with for exam ple Kahnem an. The form alist or m athem atical character of the m easurem ent m odels of psychophysics dem ands an explicit 1 This introduction is drawn on the basis of Gigerenzer’s CV as it is available from the website of his research group, see http://www.m pib- berlin.m pg.de/en/forschung/abc/index.htm 2 Daston labels herself an historian of ideas, specializing in the m athem atics of the eighteenth century (Daston (2001), p.9). 2 Gigerenzer the Decided – Floris Heukelom , August 2005 opinion of the psychologist about the usefulness of m athem atics in psychological research. Before setting out the content of Gigerenzer’s work it seem s hence relevant to first introduce both psychophysics and cognitive psychology, and the view on m athem atics especially the form er im plies. What is Psychophysics? Psychophysics, or physiological psychology as it is som etim es referred to3, is the scientific field that investigates the physiology of the senses. A total of seven senses is distinguished, but the larger part of psychophysical research concentrates nevertheless on the visual sense4. Psychophysics em ploys an experim ental m ethodology in which the relationship between physical stim uli and their responses in the form of sensational perception is investigated. Most of the tim e the sensation and the perception are equated, i.e. no perception m eans no sensation5. Som etim es, however, a distinction is drawn. In this case a sensation is m ore narrowly defined as the first stage in a chain of a (bio) chem ical and neurological process that m ay lead to a perception6. Psychophysics originates in the second half of the nineteenth century and counts am ong its m ain early figures such authors as Helm holtz, Fechner and Wundt7. As a result of his attem pt to construct scales for the perceived sensations and the resulting proposition of the just noticeable difference (jnd), especially Fechner stands out as a key figure. His psychological scales are taken to derive naturally from our everyday language and experience. Hot and cold, for exam ple, are psychological scalings of tem perature stim uli. This basic fram ework of stim ulus-response and the notion of psychological scales have survived unchanged to this day. If we consider the psychophysical work of Gigerenzer, but also of Kahnem an and Tversky for instance, it is evident that the m ain question is still how to m easure the 3 See for exam ple Boring (1929). Physiological psychology in this sem inal history on experim ental psychology refers predom inantly to the pre-Fechnerian first half of the nineteenth century. 4 See the Wikipedia on psychophysics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychophysics 5 http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stage=1&word=sensation 6 See the Wikipedia on sensation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation 7 Murray (1993), Boring (1929), Kline (2000), Michel (1999), Danziger (1990), and m any others. 3 Gigerenzer the Decided – Floris Heukelom , August 2005 sensational responses given the stim ulus-response fram ework8. Gigerenzer him self describes psychophysics in slightly different term s as arising out of the divergence between our attem pt to describe the world around us, and the question of how we perceive that world: “Psychophysik, so könnte m an sagen, entsteht aus der Divergenz zwischen der physikalischen Beschreibung der Welt und der Beschreibung derselben m ittels unserer Wahrnem ung.”9 The stim ulus-response fram ework of psychophysics and its related discussion on m easurem ent has been taken over by behaviorism and cognitive psychology in the twentieth century.
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